


Be Not Afraid.

by EducationalAdmiral



Series: Hell Hath Visiting Hours [3]
Category: Leverage
Genre: Alternate Universe - Afterlife, Angst, Eliot Spencer Has PTSD, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hell, Hurt, Hurt Eliot Spencer, Hurt/Comfort, Protective Eliot Spencer, This one is softer than the others of this series, some much needed downtime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-30
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2019-04-15 00:11:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14147649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EducationalAdmiral/pseuds/EducationalAdmiral
Summary: “What do you need?” Nate asked, aware that Eliot knew his own pain better than anyone.“A bath,” Eliot shrugged. “Some.. some needle and thread. Bandages.” The idea of being able to heal some of his wounds felt strange and far off. So long he’d just been hanging from his wrists no matter the state of his body, letting himself bleed an infinite amount of blood because physicality didn’t matter in hell. Somehow, knowing he was safe, made everything feel a little more real- made his wounds ache and throb deeper than before and made his heart cry for soft, physical contact- for cooking, the smell of Parker’s hair or Hardison’s soft skin, for mindless television, for anything domestic and normal.///Or, now freed from Hell's confines, Eliot takes a moment to heal- but nothing ever lasts long.





	Be Not Afraid.

**Author's Note:**

> This work contains descriptions of torture, violence, blood and other possibly upsetting content. Read with caution!

After a fair amount of running, Eliot found himself in a room much like Nate’s apartment had been. His eyesight was still red, hair still sweaty, heart still pounding- but he was  _ safe _ . Safer than he had been in hell, at least. His friends were by his sides, nervous hands fussing over his wounds as he laid on a sofa- no doubt staining it incurably. 

Eventually, the air around them seemed to calm.

“What do you need?” Nate asked, aware that Eliot knew his own pain better than anyone.

“A bath,” Eliot shrugged. “Some.. some needle and thread. Bandages.” The idea of being able to heal some of his wounds felt strange and far off. So long he’d just been hanging from his wrists no matter the state of his body, letting himself bleed an infinite amount of blood because  _ physicality _ didn’t matter in hell. Somehow, knowing he was safe, made everything feel a little more real- made his wounds ache and throb deeper than before and made his heart cry for soft, physical contact- for cooking, the smell of Parker’s hair or Hardison’s soft skin, for mindless television, for anything domestic and normal.

But if he closed his eyes, he was back in Hell.

“You got it,” Hardison said, calmer than he had been in hours. “Parker, you get a med-kit, I’ll help Eliot into a bath.”

Parker nodded and disappeared. Hardison slowly slipped his arms under Eliot’s back, careful not to jostle his wounds or move him too fast. The skin on skin contact made Eliot’s heart rate quicken- he was used to being harmed by everything now, but Hardison seemed to sense it.

“You’re all good, man,” Hardison mumbled. Eliot had missed Hardison’s smooth voice, his dark, soft, skin. “I got you, it’s just me.”

Slowly, Eliot and Hardison moved to the bathroom. Hardison ran some warm water and helped Eliot undress- what he was wearing was minimal in the first place, just a thin pair of shorts- and slip in. The door opened and Parker came in carrying a med-kit in one hand and a mug of tea in the other. Eliot took the tea first, then the med-kit. Hardison handed him a soap-covered loofah and he began to work the dirt and blood off his skin. It felt weird, being around people again- people he loved. His mind echoed the angered shouts of Moreau and Chapman, loudly. 

As if reading his mind, Parker mumbled, “You didn’t tell us you had to be around them.”

“Didn’t matter,” Eliot grunted, grunting as he scrubbed at his sore skin. “There wasn’t anything that coulda been done about it.”

There was a brief silence.

“I… I helped hunt him down... We killed him.. I’m the reason you were stuck with him-”

“It’s better that I was stuck with him than havin’ ‘im above ground, hurting more people,” Eliot said calmly, patiently. Parkers’ eyes were moist. “Don’t apologize. I’m just… I’ll be fine. Moreau didn’t do anything to me I ain’t used to. He’s done worse to me before. He could only yell at me there.”

Eliot realized the weight of what he’d said- the subtext that Hardison and Parker were no doubt taking from it. And they were right. He shrunk under their gaze, focusing solely on washing the blood off his skin. It felt nice to be clean again. It’d been too long.

After he got his skin as clean as he could in the now red water, he reached out. Hardison helped him stand and drain the tub, then turned on the showerhead to clean what the bath couldn’t. Eliot was shaky, but Hardison kept him stable.

After a few minutes, he turned off the water and stepped out, Parker handing him a towel. He dried himself off carefully, trying not to upset any of his wounds. They help him put on a pair of boxers and then moved him to where he could sit.

“Do you want me to do it?” Parker asked, taking the medkit in her hands and looking over all his large, long cuts that all needed stitches.

“Yeah,” Eliot mumbled, looking at his quivering hands for a moment before deciding to let them take care of him. The domesticity of it was strange- as if they hadn’t just broken him out of jail- out of  _ hell _ . He didn’t know if they were still in danger-  _ surely they had to be, but he wasn’t certain how much _ \- but here they were, helping him bathe and mending his wounds. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed them.

Hardison took Eliot’s hands, noticing how some of his nails were missing and started to wrap them. Parker began threading a needle and handing Eliot pain meds to down. Hardison used to be squeamish, Eliot thought, he used to have to leave the room for this. But Hardison’s hand only shook a little, and Parker’s hands didn’t shake at all. They weren’t acting like he’d break, but they were being delicate. He wanted to cook for them, something in him whispered, he wanted to cook for them to pay them back for this. For saving him, even though he didn’t deserve it.

“Everyone decent?” A voice called from the door, knocking gently.

“God, yes Nate,” Hardison mumbled, rolling his eyes. “Now wouldn’t exactly be the best time for that.”

“Not what I meant,” Nate replied as he and Sophie entered the room.

Nate and Sophie.

It had been so long since he’d seen Nate and Sophie outside of that small room in Hell. He’d forgotten the stupid resting state of Nate’s face, had forgotten the length of Sophie’s hair and the color of her eyes, the soft smell of alcohol that came from Nate somehow even if he was sober.

“It’s good to see you,” Eliot mumbled without thinking.

He saw Nate and Sophie both smile.

“It’s good to see you,” Sophie said back.

“Anything from Ekaziah?” Hardison asked somewhat hesitantly. 

“Not yet. But we’re safe, so he’s still alive.”

“How do you know we’re safe?” Eliot asked, feeling out of the loop. “Who’s Ekaziah?”

“An angel. He helped us plan your escape. He put my apartment in a pocket dimension and taught us how to enter it. We are safe so long as he is. Er- so long as he’s alive, not safe.”

Eliot raised an eyebrow, so Nate continued.

“I had to stab him to cause a diversion. He’s been silent ever since. But he’s alive, or the pocket dimension would’ve fallen through. He might’ve gotten caught.”

Eliot winced as Hardison wrapped one of his fingers, the fabric touching the exposed quick. Hardison looked up at Eliot’s face, then back to his hands.

“If he got caught,” Sophie said, looking at Eliot’s wounds sadly but not expressing the thought, “They might try to squeeze information out of him. He promised he wouldn’t tell our location, but there’s no guarantee they can’t force it out.”

“So what’s the plan?” Eliot asked, and he saw the whole team smile at his enthusiasm.

“First, we get you patched up,” Hardison said, finishing a wrap on one of Eliot’s fingers as Parker finished knotting a stitch.

“Then, we hunt down the bastard that sent you to hell.”

“God?” Eliot asked.

“God,” Nate responded, smiling.

 

///

 

After he was all fixed up, Eliot told them he’d need two days- at most- to recover. After that, he’d be ready for anything they needed. They started to get deeper into the plan, explaining what they’d done to break him out of hell and what they’d have to do from there.

The biggest problem was that none of them had met God yet. All they knew was what Ekaziah hand told them, and he even he had admitted that he knew little.

“God,” Ekaziah had explained, “is merely his name. The power behind it is stronger than what it implies. God is… I can’t begin to describe. He has power over all of heaven. What I am doing for you is likely to get me killed, charged with treason. Not that it matters, being under his power is worse than I can imagine death is. I haven’t experienced it.”

“It’s not great,” Hardison mumbled.

“Regardless, it’s a risk I’m taking. He will come after you when free Eliot, and he will most likely end me to get to you. I will only be able to protect you for so long, depending on his temper. All I can ask is, when he comes after you, you change his mind. What he does to people is cruel, and what the angels do is cruel. Make the afterlife better, that’s all I can ask.”

Now, Ekaziah was missing and they were hiding in a pocket dimension of his own making.

They were all resting quietly on the couch in Nate’s apartment when the world broke apart. The ground shook, sending them all flying off the furniture and to the floor. Eliot grunted, feeling some of the stitches on his abdomen pull.

“What’s going on, Nate?” Eliot grunted as Parker and Hardison rushed over to help him back up. Blood started to blossom into the fabric of his shirt where his stitches had pulled and snapped. The world continued to vibrate, the ground shaking underneath them.

“Ekaziah-”Nate said, punishing himself up and grabbing Sophie, helping her up and keeping her stable. “He’s in danger- we need to leave. If this place falls through with us in it, it won’t be pretty.”

Once Sophie was up, she moved to help Eliot. They helped him stand and moved him to where they could all hold onto something to keep them steady. The floor of Nate’s apartment was beginning to fracture. Eliot held himself against a counter with one hand and gripped his torn stitches with the other.

“Okay- okay, hold on-” Nate spoke, flustered. He rushed into the kitchen and grabbed the blade Ekaziah had given him. He held it in the air and spoke in rushed, hushed words. A door seemed to opened and seemed to pull them through it. 

 

///

 

Eliot’s vision was blurry- unadjusted to the bright light and the soft hum of Heaven outside of the pocket dimension. He’d spent only a moment there before being whisked into Ekaziah’s pocket dimension. The pain in his side was ripe- the worst of his torn stitches there. He clutched it as his eyes readjusted. His friends came into his vision- he could see their mouths moving but he couldn’t understand them over the ringing in his ears. He could see the golden gates of heaven in the distance. He could see angels approaching them. He could feel his heart racing- pain flaring throughout his body.

When the ringing stopped and his eyesight cleared, he saw Nate standing in front of him and noticed Parker and Hardison at his sides, keeping him stable. He couldn’t see Sophie- but he heard her. For a second he couldn’t tell it was her- he’d never heard her beg before. He decided, without hesitation, that he didn’t like it.

“ _ Please _ ,” Sophie was begging and angels were moving in on them. “Eliot didn’t deserve hell- he didn’t. I’m sure- there has to be someone we can talk to-”

“You will talk alright,” One of the angels bit out. “Just like Ekaziah did. God will have his way with you.”

Eliot swallowed the lump in his throat. He could feel Parker’s nail-biting into the skin on his arms, Hardison’s hands gripping him softer than Parker’s because Hardison was  _ careful- _ careful and cautious in every way Parker just went with it. Hardison checked his harness a dozen times before jumping but Parker would go without any safety precaution and Eliot- he was the in-between of the two. He would check if he could but he wasn’t afraid of jumping in blind. He knew what he had to do to keep them safe, even if it meant endangering himself. He’d do anything for them.

He’d give himself up.

“Don't you dare,” he heard Hardison say through gritted teeth, almost as if he’d read Eliot’s mind and-  _ hell- _ maybe he had, or maybe Eliot was getting predictable. “Don’t you dare make me lose you again.” Hardison’s grip tightened on Eliot’s arm- now just as biting as Parker’s.

Eliot didn’t say anything, but he didn’t try to pull himself away from them like he had considered doing. The angels moved towards them and Eliot looked forward to Nate. He saw Sophie get knocked into his view from wherever she had been before- towards Nate who rushed to help her up. The soft hum of heaven had risen into a scream in Eliot’s ears.

“God will have his way with you,” The angel bit out again, and Eliot watched helplessly as it grabbed Nate and Sophie in its terrible, swift hands and it squeezed till they both shut their eyes and screamed.

It was the first time Eliot had heard a noise like that from Nate. After all those years, he’d heard nothing like that scream. It was a sound of pure desperation and- even in his  _ worst _ moments, drowning it alcohol- Nate was never  _ desperate _ . The angels' hands tightened on Nate and Sophie and Eliot felt Hardison and Parker’s grips on him tighten at the same time. He felt his teeth clench.

A different angel moved in on them, but that was only in the back of Eliot’s mind. Nate was unconscious now, his head lolling to the side and Sophie was screaming his name and Eliot’s ears were ringing and-

_ And suddenly Parker and Hardison’s hands were gone and Eliot was alone _ \- alone like in hell and his torn stitches bled worse as an angel took Eliot up in its hands.

“God will have his way with you,” It said, a sharp grin on its features and its person glowing somehow angrily- and Eliot’s vision faded to nothing. 

 

///

 

The next time Eliot came to-  _ Eliot ignored the strange feeling that he was sick of there being a next time and sick of coming to- _ his wounds were no longer aching or bleeding. Strangely, he felt fine, as much as he ever felt fine. There was still a dull ache in his bones from years of overworking himself, a slight strain in his shoulders from countless dislocations,  but other than that, he was all good.

He felt… great, actually.

But then he remembered where he was and why he was there. He took in his surroundings- the unending brightness of heaven filled the long hall of the chapel that he had a birds-eye view of. He realized that he must’ve been suspended in the air some way- not chains on his wrists but instead a metal cage that turned ever so slightly in the air. 

There were no angels to be seen- not real ones, only tall murals stretching the walls that looked like the work of Renaissance artists. There were lines and lines of pews that Eliot could see, stretching almost as far as he could see till the wall ended the hall. The doors were tall and grand and art nouveau-esc. He wondered what Sophie’s keen eyes could see in all this art that his could not.

Sophie. Sophie and Nate and Parker and Hardison. His brain started saying their names at a whisper and then rose in volume.  _ Sophie! Nate! Parker! Hardison!  _ **_SOPHIE! NATE! PARKER! HARDISON! PARKER! HARDISON!_ **

He found himself looking around frantically for any sign of them. He didn’t know how he hadn’t noticed them yet- but they were suspended in cages too. They were all spinning mid-air like decorations, all of them passed out on the bottoms of their cages and isolated from each other.

Eliot tried to yell out their names but he found his voice died in his throat. His mouth was dry and his throat was vaguely sore from his time in hell but it wasn’t too bad- it was a pain he would’ve been able to dismiss if his friends weren’t all looking quite so lifeless.

“ _ Parker _ ,” He hissed, his voice still catching but breaking through. “Hardison. Nate. Sophie.”

None of them moved.

“Nate,” Eliot hissed again, louder this time. “Parker, _ guys-” _

Nate stirred a little, if minutely.

“Nate,” Eliot said, his voice finally rising above a whisper. His vocal cords weren’t happy, but he didn’t care. _ “Nate.” _

Nate pushed himself up slowly, and Eliot forgot how old Nate looked sometimes. Nate’s tired eyes and rough voice, Nate’s graying hair.  Nate seemed to gather himself and start to search for the source of his name.

“Eliot,” He exclaimed, moving quickly and causing his cage to start to swing more severely. Nate was hanging a good distance from Eliot, somewhat lower. Nate stumbled to the side of his cage and held on, looking up to Eliot and becoming only a little nauseous.

“See if you can wake everyone else up,” Eliot spoke, his voice still gruff. He cleared his throat a couple times as Nate started to call Sophie’s-  _ of course, her first- _ name. Sophie started to wake up and glance around the chapel, her eyes going wide at all the paintings.

“Sophie,” Nate said but she didn’t seem to register it. 

“These look like Michelangelo's work,” Sophie whispered, her voice mystified, wandering to the side of her cage, seemingly unaffected by its swinging. “They’re beautiful.”

Sophie was right, they were beautiful. They somehow captured the beauty of the angels- their iridescent glow, tall heights, and bright faces. Nothing about them was red or angry or biting. Their hands weren’t coming down on them, they weren’t causing Eliot’s ears to scream. Suddenly, Eliot’s eyes caught on one of the portraits.

It was tall and looked like it had been beautiful, once. There was red streaked across it now, staining it and hiding the angels face. Though Eliot had never known him, he felt the air change, and he knew, somehow. 

“Ekaziah..”

“Hardison, Parker,” Nate called, ignoring Sophie’s mystified mumbling.

Eliot cleared his throat again, watching Nate and gripping his own side carefully where there was a soft phantom pain from his now absent stitches. Hardison started to stir, Parker waking mere seconds after him. As soon as she was up, Parker started towards the edge of her cage and started to examine it.

“Oh, good lord,” Hardison gritted out and Eliot suddenly remembered Hardison’s fear of heights. He looked like he might be sick.

“Just focus on something,” Parker suggested as she worked her way towards the lock of her cage, crawling on her hands and knees slowly so as to not rattle the cage. “Stare down at the floor or one of the bars, you’ll get less dizzy.”

“Okay, okay,” Hardison mumbled through a mouthful of air. Eliot cleared his throat a couple more times and found his voice again.

“Is everyone alright?”

“Yeah,” He heard from Nate. “I’m fine.” Noises of agreement came from beneath him. Satisfied, Eliot redirected his attention again to the portrait of Ekaziah.

The red covering his face was so…  _ bright _ . Bright like fresh blood- human or otherwise. It had dark parts, but it looked fresh, not dried to a dull burnt orange. The portrait had been destroyed- burned at the edges and torn irreparably. Black drew itself through the paint in a fracture like a pattern, tears pulling off from it, and red pouring from the tears. Eliot felt his heartache for the picture.

“He died for  _ you _ ,” A voice came. Eliot felt the air in the room go still. Hardison was no longer complaining and Sophie no longer gasping at the beauty of the art, Parker no longer crawling in her cage looking for a way to freedom. All movement in the room disappeared, all was still and silent. 

“Tell me, was it worth it? Were  _ you _ worth his death?”

Eliot couldn’t bring himself to answer the question- he thought it might’ve been rhetorical, but it didn’t matter. His voice didn’t seem to exist anymore anyway. Still, his question was heard.

“Who am  _ I?” _

The voice rang so clearly in the hall it was almost terrifying- it bounced off the walls and resonated, its source unknown but knowing powerful.

“It is simple;  _ I am. _ Need you know more?”

Eliot swallowed.

“I am the bringer of judgment, the beginning and the end of all. I am the  _ Almighty _ . You prayed to me, you used to. You do not anymore.”

There was a lapse of silence, and Eliot closed his eyes. He tried to focus on his breathing, but suddenly the still air seemed unable to satisfy his hungry lungs.

“Eliot Spencer, bow before your maker!”

Eliot opened his eyes and stared into the face of God. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! This story will be continued with, at the least, one more part. I'm sorry for taking so long to update! Comments and kudos are always appreciated, and I love to hear your ideas about what will come next! God has finally made an appearance so things can only get more exciting from here on out!
> 
> Find me on Tumblr at [ EducationalAdmiral! ](https://educationaladmiral.tumblr.com/)


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